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Dear Clean, As a member of the medical profession, it is not very often that I advocate violence as a solution to everyday problems. Then again, Clean, this isn't your usual situation! The next time your "friends" tell you to try pot, threaten them with the violent misapplication of Preparation H. As the directions suggest, this can be agonizing.

Dear Preparation H, My husband and I have been married for forty years, most of them good. Lately, though, he's been getting agitated by the slightest little thing. Yesterday, he flew into a screaming rage when I ate the last of the Special K. When I told him to simmer down and take his pills, he locked himself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out until he'd scrubbed the sink, tub and toilet. This is great for my housekeeping, but how do I get my old hubby back? --Waiting in Wyoming

Dear Waiting, According to a quaint little book I've been reading lately, certain Ibo tribes in Lower Nigeria claim to possess sacred remedies which cure the distress you've described. This distress is widely believed by the clansmen to be found only in an "elulefu", or "worthless man." By drinking the sacred mixture, the sickly can once again become "great men" among their peers. But while these little jungle-juices are considered mystical by the culture that produces them, anyone with a lick of sense would immerse themselves in a vat of Preparation H before going all the way to Africa for a rancid shot of monkey piss.

Dear Preparation H, I am a third-world country with a nominal supply of plutonium and a pesky neighbor to the south. I feel it is my right to defend myself from their imperialist aggression, but under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, I am obliged to let foreign spies search my power plants and research laboratories. If I have to keep hiding my stockpiles of fissionable material from their prying Geiger counters, I'll never finish my ballistic prophet of death. What are my options? --Perplexed

Dear Canada, Like many other despotic lands, you are mistaken in your belief that the Bomb will provide the answers you seek. Only when your scientists unlock the secret of hemorrhoidal relief will you truly possess the status and acclaim you so clearly desire.